The Toronto Maple Leafs have beaten the Tampa Bay Lightning and taken a 3-2 series lead.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were down 2-0 and played a horrendous first period, but showed the kind of determination and never-quit attitude that is becoming this team’s trademark, and ended up victorious.
The Leafs got great games from William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews, but the number-one star, and most important player of the night was Jack Campbell, who was excellent all night, but who, most importantly, kept the game within reach until the Leafs got it going.
The Leafs will head back to Tampa to close out the series on Thursday.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Tampa Bay Lightning
Despite the Lightning having seven more minutes of power-play time heading into game five, the two teams were even on special teams for the series (thanks to 2x shorthanded goals by the Leafs).
The Leafs, if you can believe it, held the edge 8-7 in 5v5 goals.
They also held home ice advantage in a tied series.
And yet, the negativity surrounding the team heading into last night’s game was astounding. Now personally, as hard as I tried, even I couldn’t avoid getting negative after game four. The Leafs had a great opportunity, and they came out flat and didn’t get any better.
Game four was a dud, but the series was tied, and the Leafs had the edge overall, meaning you’d think that people would have at least given them a chance.
But five minutes into the game last night, it was clear why they didn’t. Tampa scored to make it 2-0 and then the Leafs took another penalty, and things were looking pretty bad.
But they never quit. Against Columbus, in 2020, they once came back from a three goal deficit to win a game. Against Montreal they came from multi-goal deficits to force overtime twice in the series (becoming the only team to ever do that and lose both games).
And in this series, in both games they’ve lost, they have at least managed to come from behind to make the games interesting. Then they did it again tonight.
If you’re counting, that’s four multi-goal comebacks in 17 games, with two “good but no quite good enough” comebacks thrown in there as well. That’s pretty close to 40% of the playoff games they’ve played in the last three years.
The Toronto Maple Leafs now hold a 3-2 series lead, in large part to the awesome crowd inside and outside the ACC last night. After two years of fan-less hockey, this was amazing to behold. But most importantly, the fans had a good time seeing their team win. I hope they enjoyed it, because unless the Capitals make a comeback, the Leafs will play three road games before coming back home sometime late next week.